


When the Kasha Comes

by Letterblade



Category: Sengoku Basara
Genre: Gen, Just Gratuitously Awful, Out of Body Experiences, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 06:06:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1294186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Letterblade/pseuds/Letterblade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had rebelled against the Demon King. He had failed. The flaming demon called the kasha will steal the bodies of sinners and tear them to pieces as it drags them down to hell. It is time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Kasha Comes

**Author's Note:**

> Couldn't have written parts of this without www.hyakumonogatari.com, oh Katsuie and your yokai obsession.

The Demon King had not seen fit to kill him.

The Demon King had simply left him, beaten to the rocky ground before his throne of skeletons, senseless from the touch of his ghastly red claws that passed right through his armor and left his flesh crawling like maggots. The Demon King had deemed him an ant not worth the squashing, an impotent threat not worth the ridding, and shame sat like a cannonball in his gut. The shimmer of raw power he left in his wake, like heat rising from a fire, faded, slow. The piled skulls sat voiceless, keeping secrets in their eyesockets.

He had thought he would join them. He had thought he would die. A skull as unremarkable as any other, once his flesh had been peeled off and his bones bleached. Worthless. Wicked. Black spots swam before his eyes.

Perhaps soon the kasha would come for him, tear him to pieces. It would be easier than living, would it not?

Instead it was some of the foot-soldiers that found him, the ones still with their black Oda headbands tight round their shaved and loyal heads, one step closer to skulls already. They fenced him in with bo staves even as he lay barely able to move, hissed and chattered, moonlight painting their faces oni red. Traitor, traitor, traitor. Ears still ringing from the Demon King's gun blasts, point blank against his breastplate, battering his ribs.

When he tried to speak, one of them jammed the end of his staff between his teeth.

They cracked his armor and peeled him out like a shrimp, bound him like a field captive, thin cord digging painfully tight into wrists and arms and throat, tighter when he twitched. They cursed him, spat on him, dragged him from before the throne, down step after step battering his knees into the night. Their staves found him, cracking against wounded flesh, pain enough to make his vision blur red and his screams echo off the castle walls. A blow to his face every time it showed anger, every time it showed grief, until he closed his eyes and lay as if dead. A corpse could not provoke them.

Yet it was not a corpse they wanted, but a puppet.

Time stretched. He shook with pain, he wept with pain, too weak to offer the least resistance. He begged and groveled as they ordered, he ate dirt with a staff bearing down on the back of his neck, and the words and the dirt alike felt dead and colorless on his tongue. Another man's words. He drifted far away. Further away still, Lady Oichi's slender hand held a flower. Hope died. The moon faded.

He woke sputtering and gasping with a face full of cold water, gulped deep, choked. Cord round his neck yanking him up, and the sun burned his eyes, and the world was thunder and lightning, sudden.

"It's about time you woke."

The voice was thin, laughing in his ear. Water trickled down his bare chest, split lip cracking anew and stinging as he coughed, one eye swollen nearly shut and hair sticking in the other as he squinted against the late morning sun, stunned nerveless. He was still bound, he could not feel his two littlest fingers, somebody's hand clutched the ropes spanning his back. He reeled, half on his knees and half dragged to the basin before him, he gasped for air.

The second dunk lasted longer, and he struggled, instinctive, tried to kick even when he couldn't tell which way was up, felt the cord drag tight around his neck until his ears rang.

"I'm surprised you still struggle to live." Back up again. Coughing water. One of the gardens near the castle. Everything was blurry. It was Lord Mitsuhide, his hands shoving him down, his voice in his ear. His face with a smile upon it like a warped knife swimming before his eyes.

His palm sharp and ringing across his cheek, voice still pleasant. "Answer me, Katsuie."

His lips felt numb. He struggled for words. "The kasha came for me. I am already dead."

"I see," Lord Mitsuhide purred, indulgent. "So you wish to think you're in hell?" He laughed. "The line between earth and hell is thin, after all, our King has shown us that. And yet--and yet--"

He wrapped a slim, cool hand round Katsuie's throat. Lightly, softly. Raised a short knife, ran his own tongue along the blade, the blade along Katsuie's cheek. Tracing beneath his eye, his lip, the hollow of his throat. He let his hands go limp in the ropes, stared into nothingness over Lord Mitsuhide's shoulder and waited for the bite of the blade. The shadows under the trees swam in the bright morning light.

Lord Mitsuhide's laugh, soft as his hand, jarred the shadows into focus.

"Your mind has lost the will to live--yet your body still has it. Unfortunate. So close...I wonder if any care for life or death could be beaten out of you yet, it would be so interesting..." One finger pried under the burning tight cord round his neck. The knife flashed. His throat ached as the cord sprang free, hot awls through his hands and shoulders from bound nerves, worn raw. He croaked with pain, swayed on his knees, and Lord Mitsuhide steadied him, the knife clenched in his teeth and some strange, black light in his eyes. Even free, he could barely move his hands. It didn't matter.

Lord Mitsuhide caught him by the throat and dragged him round and bent him backwards into the basin. The sun blinded him, sparkling water splashing over his open eyes, his mouth still open from shock. It crept up his nose faster like this. He struggled not to breathe, he drowned regardless, he beat weak as a kitten at Lord Mitsuhide's chest.

"No." Lord Mitsuhide dragged him back up and shook the water out of him, and his laugh was high and thin now. "No. Not nearly good enough. You are in hell, deposed King of Spirits, no life to fight for. Be a good soul and surrender to your torment."

Time stretched when he shoved him under again. Different. Slower. Lord Mitsuhide's mouth moving as water filled his ears, Lord Mitsuhide's hand stroking his hair soothingly as he held him under. Barely any strength left in him to thrash. He didn't want to thrash, even--could he just be a corpse again, be a puppet, not be trapped in this foolish body that fought for something so petty as breathing...

"It's good he didn't notice you enough to punish you, really. Very good." Lord Mitsuhide's voice came from very far away. He squeezed his eyes shut, waited to fall into oblivion. Water. Air. "I would have been so jealous. For you to suffer at his hands for your treachery...hahh, no, you are common dirt, to be tormented by the common dirt, far beneath the Demon King..."

Water. Air. Light fractured his world as Lord Mitsuhide slapped him hard enough to leave his ears ringing. He was dizzy beyond comprehension, face and lungs burning from breathing water, choking it up again, again and again. Water. Air. It took forever, breeze stirring Lord Mitsuhide's pale hair, strands curling against the sky. His body felt light, as if he drifted in water entirely, not crumpled on the stony ground. His body floated.

He floated.

"Stop fighting. Stay under. Good boy."

He floated. Higher. The world brightened. The courtyard spread out below, his own wreck of a body sprawled against the edge of the basin, Lord Mitsuhide bent over it. Strange, so strange, to see it like this. Was he a spirit now? Was his body to be left to the beasts?

"By all rights, you should be executed. But our Lord has not given the word, and I choose not to give it in his stead. So I save your life, such--" A broken man lay limp under water with only a knife at his throat to hold him there, far below. A broken man breathed again, once the knife was raised. "Such as it is. It is mine. You are mine. So you will serve us still." Laughter, endless laughter. "You will march in my Demon King's vanguard, your body will be my plough on the battlefield, to break the earth for salting, and so your punishment will never be finished and your sins never forgiven--ahahahaha--never--! What do you think of that, Katsuie? Will you beg for mercy? Will you beg for your life back from me, so that it may end?"

He could not answer him. He could not speak, he could not feel his lips; his corpse far below. The world blurred bright, the castle courtyard rippled like a pond in an earthquake. Lord Mitsuhide dragged a body out of the water, held it in his arms, shook it, brayed his glee to the heavens.

Could he stay like this forever? Would he finally be permitted to die?

Yet when Lord Mitsuhide turned the bare and beaten husk of his body over, he felt himself cough, convulse, spit water. Still bound to his flesh. Allowed neither to live nor die. The world darkened. He thought he could feel no more despair, yet still it dragged him down. Free for only a moment.

Only what he deserved.

Marching feet came for them as he fell, slow as a feather, reluctant. Soul and flesh drifting together in Lord Mitsuhide's arms, senses stirring, trapped in this unwanted world. He ached to float free again. But couldn't. Could not even allow himself the desire.

"Ah. They're here. The Lady's honor guard." Lord Mitsuhide tenderly peeled the wet hair off his cheeks and smiled, fond and bright. "Lady Nohime has commanded that you be exposed in stocks and given fifty lashes for attacking her husband, as is her right, though she has chosen not to dirty her hands with it. I doubt she wants to see you right now, you who she had once trusted. Come. It's time."

He couldn't walk, so they dragged him, and dirt turned to mud on his legs.

The stocks held him half-bent, strained muscles left sore from the beatings in the night, left him cramped and aching. Wood pressed against his throat and he choked, dripped pink water from his lips as he coughed.

The lashes hurt, vividly, more than anything yet. So very, very simple, after Lord Mitsuhide's game, nothing but searing pain. He had not the strength to scream. The puppet had not been told to scream. Lord Mitsuhide watched, and laughed, and laughed.

They left him in the stocks afterwards, for the flies to circle his bent and bloody back.

The sun crept higher. Past noon. Lower. His mouth dry as bone. His awareness would give out from the pain, or his soul would fly again as it had under Lord Mitsuhide's hands--so he kept hoping. Yet still he continued, neither alive nor dead.

The hours were slow, slow. An overripe fruit fell from a tree, lying squashed on one cheek; he might have heard it laughing, soft and tinkling in the distance, but now it was silenced, rotting, one eye collapsed. A cat pounced on mice, turned, swished two tails as it reared, mouth bloody. The trees rattled.

Lady Oichi drifted by in white, and when he saw she had no feet, he wept, he wept until tears dried in the hot sun and his voice died in his throat.

The gate of the castle opened, and its lord came forth, armored steps heavy upon the courtyard stones. The rest scattered back into the shadows, spirits flinching from the Demon King. He stopped. Turned. Under either sun or moon, Katsuie could only see his feet.

"Shibata Katsuie, my Lord, he awaits your judgement." He could not see the guards. Not until one stepped around, closer, shoved a staff under his chin to drag his head up. His vision blurred black. Perhaps he'd finally pass out again.

The Demon King looked at him. A minuscule shrug under the weight of his armor. Looked away.

"I don't know who that is."


End file.
